World awaits Olympic opening ceremony. Over one billion people will be tuning in to watch the highly-anticipated London spectacular.

All eyes on London and spectacular Games opening. All eyes turn to London on Friday for the Olympic opening ceremony, a three-hour showcase set to be watched by more than a billion people.

The three-hour showcase created by Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle will be watched by a crowd of 60,000 in the main stadium built in a run-down area of London's East End and a global audience of more than a billion.

Spectators will be urged to join in sing-a-longs and help create spectacular visual scenes at an event that sets the tone for the sporting extravaganza, when 16,000 athletes from 204 countries share the thrill of victory and despair of defeat with 11 million visitors.

The Games will also answer the question on Britons' lips -- were seven years of planning, construction and disruptions, and a price tag of $14 billion during one of the country's worst recessions, actually worth it?

"This is a very, very tense moment but so far I'm cautiously optimistic," said Boris Johnson, mayor of London, the only city to host the Summer Games three times.

"I'm just worried that I haven't got enough to worry about at the moment," added the mayor, known for his witty asides.

There have, however, been bumps along the way.

Media coverage in the last few weeks has been dominated by security firm G4S's admission that it could not provide enough guards for Olympic venues, meaning thousands of extra soldiers had to be deployed at the last minute, despite its multi-million-dollar contract from the government.

Counter-terrorism chiefs have played down fears of a major attack on the Games, and British Prime Minister David Cameron said that a safe and secure Olympics was his priority.

"This is the biggest security operation in our peacetime history, bar none, and we are leaving nothing to chance."

Suicide attacks on London in July, 2005, killed 52 people, and this year also coincides with the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre when 11 Israeli Olympic team members were killed by Palestinian militants.

Calls for an official commemoration of the tragedy at the opening ceremony have so far been refused.

Heavy traffic in central London and severe delays on Britain's creaking train system have added to the grumbling.

A diplomatic faux pas on Wednesday, when the flag of South Korea appeared at a women's soccer match between North Korea and Colombia, prompted North Korea's players to walk off the pitch and delayed kick-off by more than an hour.

"Of course the people are angry," North Korea's Olympic representative Ung Chang told Reuters. "If your athlete got a gold medal and put the flag probably of some other country, what happens?"

A series of doping scandals have also tarnished the Games' image in the build-up, with at least 11 athletes banned so far, and Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou became the Olympics' first "Twitter victim" when she was withdrawn from the team over tweeted comments deemed racist.

All of that is likely to be forgotten as attention around the globe turns to the opening ceremony, which begins at 2000 GMT and ends more than three hours later.

While Boyle has urged the 10,000 participating volunteers and large crowds at rehearsals this week to keep the show a secret, some elements are already in the public domain.

via Yahoo